“Aha!” Silver grins triumphantly. “Gotcha!”
Feeling substantially less miserable than she did a few minutes ago, Ria succumbs and bites into it. “I’ve honestly never met anyone like you.”
“I hope that’s a compliment.” Silver looks around, suddenly realizing that the garden is full of dandelions. “Hey, do you wanna pick some dandelions with me?”
“Sure.” Ria finishes the cheese. “Are we making a salad?”
“We’re gonna try.” Silver wanders out into the middle of the lawn, seeking the best area to pick from. “It’d be better if we had some cucumber, lettuce, and tomatoes, but we’ll make do.”
Ria giggles. “Say that again.”
“We’ll make do?”
“No, the other bit.”
“Cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes?”
Joining Silver in the lawn, Ria giggles again. To her ear, Silver’s pronunciation of the word ‘tomatoes’—tuh-may-toes—is alien, unusual, and humorous.
“Tomatoes,” she says in her own accent, still laughing. From her lips, the word sounds like tom-ahh-toes.
“Are you making fun of me?” Silver stifles her own laugh.
“No, not at all.” Ria forces a straight face, pinching her lips together so that another giggle can’t escape.
Like a shot, Silver lunges at her. She wraps her arms around Ria’s waist and tackles her, pulling her down into a bed of tall grass and dandelions. In doing so, she elicits a squeal of pleasure, followed by more giggling.
Cradling Ria in the crook of her arm, Silver leans over her so that the sun doesn’t blind her, and it’s in this pose that Ria finds herself suppressing a sudden and intensely vivid fantasy of being kissed.
“Thank you,” she coos.
“What for this time?” Silver rests her other hand on Ria’s hip.
“Cheering me up.”
Scarcely a second elapses, but the moment feels never ending. Sinking into it, allowing the fantasy to take over, Ria closes her eyes and parts her lips slightly—ever so slightly—in case Silver should feel inclined to take advantage of them. Instead …
“I would kill him, you know. If he touched you.” Silver fondles Ria’s hip. “I would kill him.”
Ria doesn’t doubt that for a second. Their eyes locked on one another, she reaches up and caresses Silver’s cheek with her palm, not knowing quite what to say. The opportunity’s soon lost anyway.
“Ahem,” Alex clears his throat loudly, making them both jump.
Shit. He’s standing at the edge of the garden, glowering at Silver.
Remaining perfectly calm, her expression giving nothing away—despite the fact that it looks for all the world as though she’s poised to commence an affair—Silver attempts to placate him.
“This isn’t exactly what it looks like.”
“I’m sure.” Alex remains stern-faced. “We’re ready to head out, so hurry the hell up.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hours pass. The sun starts to sink slowly in the sky, the air cools, and Alex never leaves Linx’s side—much to Silver’s chagrin. At Stretford, he’d volunteered to give Tomkin his horse, so he’s been riding with Linx ever since.
A pattern is definitely forming.
The three male Deltas—Bold, Mason and Tomkin—stick together, riding slightly apart from the rest of the group. Linx and Alex ride together, engaged in their own private conversation, while Luka rides alongside Carmen, determined to make her succumb to his charms. Silver and Ria bring up the back of the group, largely ignored by everyone else.
As Aiden had ridden with her, Silver rides with Ria in front of her: one arm around her waist, the other on the reins. Very occasionally, she catches Alex glancing back at them, his expression pure displeasure.
Before sunset, they stop beside a small lake so that the horses can drink and graze a little, and water bottles or canteens can be refilled. Bold would like to cover some more ground before nightfall, but nobody else seems so keen.
It’s been a long day, and the rest of the group is tired. Besides, this seems like a good place to settle for the night. The lake is nestled close to a small clearing, light tree cover on one side, dense forest on the other; it feels tranquil.
Leaving Ria sitting on a tree stump in the clearing, never out of eyeshot, Silver goes to the edge of the lake to fetch water for them both. From here, she has eyes on practically the whole group.
While Mason wanders off alone, bow in hand, to see if he can rustle up something meaty for dinner, Bold and Tomkin sit and talk together like long lost brothers. Gesticulating wildly, they exchange lovingly remembered tales from their youth, each reminding the other of minutiae they’d forgotten.
On the other side of the clearing, Luka is still trying his luck with Carmen, despite the fact that she remains utterly unmoved by the attention. He should be embarrassed by how desperate he’s appearing, but he simply doesn’t know when to quit.
Finally, her eyes are drawn back to Alex and Linx. They’re never more than three feet apart, Linx listening with interest as Alex relates exaggerated war stories. Alex seems comfortable in her company, which is mildly unnerving in its own way. He was never a confident flirt, and was seldom ever aware when a woman was hitting on him. Of course, he’s only ever been with two women, so his experience is limited.
Forcing herself to look away, Silver uncaps the first bottle and submerges it, watching the bubbles of air rise to the surface and pop. At the same time, more bubbles—much larger ones—appear further from the lakeshore. Do fish fart?
Her contemplations are cut short.
Luka plants himself on a rock beside her. “Is he doing it again?”
“Yup.” Silver sighs, looking back at Alex one more time. “But now I sort of deserve it.”
“What did you do?”
“Technically?” She pulls the bottle out of the water and screws the cap on. “Nothing.”
“Okay, so what does he think you did?”
In response, Silver glances over her shoulder at Ria, catching her eyes for a few seconds.
“Oh …” Luka connects the dots. “I’d be all for that, just so you know. You can put sexual liberation at the top of the exceedingly massive list of reasons why Luka would make a better husband.”
“Exceedingly massive?” Silver uncaps another bottle and dunks it under the water, chuckling quietly. “You always did have a high opinion of yourself.”
“Not unduly, though. You gotta admit.”
She shows him her middle finger. “You’re a shit disturber. You know that?”
“I’m a glutton for punishment, and I don’t give up easy.”
Silver caps the second bottle, shaking her head in despair. “Speaking of flogging a dead horse, leave Carmen alone.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, she’s a Taint. She could be contagious for all you know.”
The look on Luka’s face tells Silver he hadn’t thought that through.
“Don’t worry, though,” Silver continues. “That pales into insignificance compared to the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
She gets up and offers him some commiseration by way of three firm pats on the back. “I’m pretty sure she’s gay, dude.”
Leaving him to ponder that, she returns to Ria.
“Water?” She offers her one of the bottles.
“God, yes.” Ria rises to meet her, downing half of it in a few gulps.
“No-one bothered you this time, did they?”
Ria shakes her head. “They wouldn’t dare with you being so close.”
Silver likes the sound of that. “I guess I’ll have to stay close, then, won’t I?”
Ria’s cheeks burn. Completely overwhelmed by how much she wants Silver to kiss her, her mind tumbles into freefall, and she can’t think of anything to say. She feels unsteady on her feet, and presses her back against a nearby tree, relying on it for support. Right now, if Silver were to pounce upon her, pinning her
there, their lips pinched together, she’s certain it would feel nothing short of perfect.
But nothing happens.
Nothing quite like that anyway.
While she’s standing there, Silver notices that she’s wearing a necklace. It’s a gold cross of some kind, but not exactly like the old Christian symbol Silver’s seen in plenty of ruined churches in her homeland. This one has two extra horizontal bars: one above the arms of the cross, and one below, slanted to the right.
Interested, Silver slides her fingers down the chain, her fingertips brushing softly against Ria’s skin, making her shiver. At the bottom of the chain, barely an inch above Ria’s breasts, Silver lifts the pendant into her hand.
“What is this? It looks religious.”
Ria was so hoping for a kiss, it takes her a while to articulate a response. “It is. I mean, I’m not—who is anymore?—but my ancestors were.”
“Is it an heirloom?”
Ria nods. “It was my mother’s, and her mother’s before that, and her mother’s … and so on. If you go back far enough, my family belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church.”
“Russian?”
Nodding again, Ria smiles shyly. “I’m Russian.”
The hit comes out of nowhere.
Silver is so preoccupied with Ria, and Ria vice versa, neither one of them sees Linx move. They don’t see her get up, nab Bold’s gun, and stride across the clearing. They don’t see anything at all, until it’s much too late to stop it.
Sensing movement in her close periphery, Ria turns her head in time to receive a blow to the side of her face from the butt of the gun, the power of the strike knocking her back against the tree, and from there to the ground.
At that point, Silver reacts instinctively. She grabs Linx’s wrist, applying pressure in precisely the right spot to make her drop the gun, then she dislocates her elbow. One sharp upwards jab with her hand is all the force it takes to pop the joint out of place, and she follows it with a swift elbow to the face.
Linx’s nasal cartilage pops, blood pouring from her nose. Of course, this time, Alex leaps to her defense without any hesitation.
“Jesus, Silver! She’s a kid!”
“Yeah”—Silver scoops the gun off the ground and dangles it in front of him—“an untrained kid with a semi-automatic weapon aimed at an unarmed woman.”
Alex doesn’t want to hear it. He takes Linx under his arm and leads her to the bank of the lake to pop her elbow back into place and stem the bleeding.
Angered by his reaction almost more than the act of violence itself, Silver suddenly finds it a great deal easier to give less of a shit about him spending so much time with Linx. She doesn’t have the patience for dickheads.
Stowing the gun in the waistband of her jeans, she drops to her knees beside Ria. “People really have it in for you, don’t they?”
“They seem to.” She lets Silver help her sit up. “More so lately.”
“Are you okay?”
Clearly not. Her cheek is already purple where the gun hit her, and she’s bleeding from a scratch near her hairline where she fell into the tree. Silver extends a hand to inspect the wound—the reflex automatic—but she hesitates halfway.
“Are you … ?”
Ria reads her mind. “You can’t catch anything from me, I promise, but I assumed you were immune.”
She takes Silver’s left hand and bares her wrist, checking for the telltale brand of a Delta. She doesn’t find that, but she does uncover a three inch vertical scar. It runs down the middle of her wrist and shows evidence of multiple incisions, made at different times, some parts of the scar better healed than others.
Ria gasps, touching her fingers to it.
“I’m not a Delta.” Silver covers herself back up, avoiding the obvious. “But I am uninfected. I was wiped by the British military, and I want to stay that way.”
Ria nods, understanding. “It’s all right. You can touch me.” She tries to put the sight of the scar out of her mind. “Please touch me.”
Silver does so immediately. She holds Ria’s face in her hands, picks a few small slivers of bark out of the wound, then catches a runaway droplet of blood on her finger and wipes it away.
“You seem pretty calm,” she observes. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been dealt a blow because of your bloodline, is it?”
“It happens on occasion.”
Silver fingers the necklace again. “Why do you wear this if it has the potential to get you beaten up?”
“Its religious symbolism is so obsolete, most people have no idea what it means unless I tell them. But it’s not like I can ever really hide who I am anyway. One look at my Authenticard and anyone can know that I have Russian blood.”
“Authenticard?” Silver looks confused.
“You don’t have one?” Ria looks more confused.
“I’ve only been here five days. What is it?”
“Hold on, are you an illegal immigrant?”
Silver laughs. “I guess so. I think we were going to be given British citizenship—we were transported out here like refugees—but that all kinda went to shit when we crash landed in the Peak District.” She raises a curious eyebrow at Ria. “Why? Are you gonna turn me in to the law?”
“I don’t think that would be in my best interests, since I seem to need you around to protect me.” She pulls something out of her bra and hands it to Silver. “This is my Authenticard.”
It’s a small, slim, rectangular piece of plastic with Ria’s photograph and personal details on it.
“Oh, it’s an ID card.” Silver studies it.
“It’s more than that. It’s a payment card, proof of citizenship—everything. It’s against the law not to carry it with you.”
Silver absorbs Ria’s details.
Name: Rianne Zykova.
Address: 208 White Hart Lane, Tottenham, Haringey, Zone N17.
Birthdate: 04/10/2320.
She performs a quick mental calculation. Ria’s twenty-eight, turning twenty-nine this year. Flipping the card over, she learns more from the back: height; weight; hair and eye color; a Russian flag, followed by the words ‘travel permit required’.
“Now you know everything about me.” Ria simpers.
“Now I know what your government thinks I should know about you.” Silver hands the card back. “What does it mean that you need a travel permit?”
Ria looks sheepish. “I’m not allowed to leave London without one. Russians are …”—she searches for the right words—“subject to certain restrictions.”
“So you’re breaking the law, too?”
“It looks that way.” Ria tucks the card back into her bra. “Are you sure you want to associate yourself with such a wanton lawbreaker?”
“I’ll take my chances.” Silver rubs Ria’s thigh. “Now let’s get you up and out of the dirt.”
Ria accepts Silver’s help to her feet, but nearly collapses again once she gets vertical. Her vision blurs, then grays, and she feels lightheaded.
“Oh, whoa. Careful.” Silver props her up against the tree, one hand on her hip, the other against her ribs. “Do you need to sit back down?”
Ria closes her eyes and shakes her head, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
“Are you sure?” Silver moves closer, transferring her hand from Ria’s ribcage to the tree beside her head. “You might be concussed.”
Ria doesn’t know how to respond. Truthfully, she’s far from sure of anything. She slides her hands up to Silver’s shoulders, steadying herself, and waits with bated breath for whatever’s about to happen next. However, when Silver takes her by the chin and tilts her head up, instead of welcoming the chance of a kiss, she panics.
“They’re watching us.” She flits her eyes over to the Deltas and back again.
“I’m sure they are.” Silver turns Ria’s head to the side, watching a drop of blood trickle down her hairline like a tear. “Can I clean you up?”
Unable to form words, R
ia simply nods. She waits patiently while Silver fetches a cloth from one of the saddlebags, and doesn’t object when she takes her by the hand and leads her over to the lakeside.
“So why do these people hate Russians so much?” Silver pats the surface of a big, flat rock on the very edge of the shore and coaxes her to sit.
Ria shrugs. “Russia was responsible for detonating the nuclear warhead that kick-started the spread of the first Chimera virus. My people caused the end of the last epoch.”
Silver makes a face. “Yeah, but that was over three centuries ago.”
“True, but the war’s still raging. The political war anyway.”
“Because the Russian Federation refused to join the Empire of Great Britain?” Silver guesses, crouching next to Ria and soaking the cloth in the lake.
“Exactly. They wouldn’t submit to foreign rule. How did you know that?”
“The British military gave us a crash course in the geography of the Empire when they landed in our city.” Silver wrings out the cloth and presses it against Ria’s head.
“Did your people give up their independence?” Ria winces as Silver dabs at her wound.
“We had little choice. We had an unsustainable power supply and a food shortage. It would’ve been suicide to turn them away.” She finishes cleaning the wound and wipes the blood off Ria’s hair. “So my homeland’s a shithole. What’s yours like?”
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there. My parents were refugees from the Russian Federation. They sought asylum in London, and that’s where I was born—that’s my home.”
“Russian blood, British heart.” Silver concludes succinctly.
While she rinses out the cloth, Ria glances over at the clearing. Linx—her elbow put back in place by Alex—is exchanging words with Bold, clearly telling him that “the Taint is a fucking Russian”, causing him to glare daggers in their direction.
“They think I’m a monster.” Ria looks away.
This isn’t the first time Silver’s heard an innocent, beautiful woman say those words, and to hear them again further fuels her defensive streak.
“First off, I’ve seen plenty of true monsters in my time, and you’re not one of them: you’re much too pretty. Secondly, I spent six years of my life with someone who was perceived that way, and I tend not to give a shit what people think.”
Lex Talionis Page 15
